Rev up your engines. Today, I’m going to show you five things you should never do in a standard transmission car if you want it to last.
The first thing is don’t spend all your time on the third, the second to first, like a race car driver. Race car drivers drive the way they do for a reason. They have a limited power band. Let’s say the power band is eight thousand RPM’s. They always want to keep the engine about 8000 rpm. So slowing down they’ll put it in the next lower gear, the next lower gear until they get to the maximum power band and then they keep shifting to keep it in the power band.
But if you’re just driving normally, you don’t need to do that. You’re going to wear out the engine and the transmission faster. And let’s face it, breaks are a lot cheaper than cautious. Of course, in an emergency situation. Sure. Downshift to a lower gear, slam the brakes on. That’ll stop the car the fastest. But for normal driving, downshifting isn’t a smart thing to do if you want things to last.
The next thing not to do is don’t drive down the road riding the clutch with your foot on the clutch the whole time. You’re driving heavy foot on the clutch. Pick it up and then when you’re done, put it to the side. Do not drive with your put on the clutch. I hadcustomer years ago with a standard transmission BMW who kept wearing the clutch out and I thought, I wonder why he’s wearing the clutch out?. When we went for a ride. I found out that he had one foot on the clutch and one foot on the gas all the time. Do not ride the clutch.
The next thing to avoid is if you’re parking on a hill, don’t just shut the car off and then put it in gear and walk away. I see more cars roll down hills because they either came out of gear or the engine wasn’t strong enough to hold and it just started slowly rolling backwards. What you want to do is have one foot on the clutch, push down, one on the brake. Then put it in gear and pull the emergency brake on that one, you shut the car off, guess what? It’s not going to roll anywhere.
Now, monocultures need very little maintenance, but you don’t want to forget the tiny bit of maintenance that a modern clutch system needs. Now, when I was a kid, most clutches were manually adjustable, like my motorcycle. Here you want to have, oh, half quarter inch to play before it starts to grab. That was just adjusted by turning the star adjuster as they where they actually got tighter. You have to loosen up a little. It’s a very simple thing. As simple as the top 8 ways to prevent costly repairs.
And if you have a car like that, you need to adjust it every once in a while when it gets too tight. Now most modern vehicles use hydraulic torches that have brake fluid in them. You don’t need to adjust and adjust themselves, but the fluid does get dirty over time. So you want to change the fluid and flush it out every two or three or four years. It’s no big deal to do. But if you don’t, the dirty fluid inside can ruin the seals.
And some of these clutch systems cost a lot of money to change the master slave cylinders. For example, some Ford pickup trucks with standard transmissions. The slave cylinder is built inside the housing. So you have to pull the transmission off to change the slave cylinder. It can cost you well over a thousand bucks. So you want to keep the fluid clean and it’s no big deal flushing it out every two or three or four years.
It’s not that hard to eat a turkey baster, suck it out and then bleed the bottom part.
The last thing I’m going to talk about is clutch replacement When they wear out and the clutch gaskets, don’t just replace the clutch disc, get a whole kit with all the parts. When a clutch just gets there and it’ll start to slip, then you need to change it. But don’t just buy the disc. You have to pull the transmission off. It’s a gigantic job.
You get a clutch set that’s got all the clutch parts in it, the desk, the plate, throw out bearings. And this one, it’s even got a nice alignment tool so you can line it and fit it in. It’s foolhardy to pull a transmission off a car and guess that the other parts will last for a lot longer. Change everything, then you don’t have to think about it for a long time.
Avoid the things we mentioned above and you’re one step closer to making your standard transmission car last as long as possible and serve you many years without having the hassle of rebuilding that an automatic transmission often needs. If you need help with your transmission, don’t hesitate to contact Davies Auto Care.
